Church Video Ideas

My mini-vacation last week was great. I didn’t think about or do anything church-related. I just rested, relaxed and had fun. I now feel refueled and ready to serve again. I’m grateful to my church and my boss for allowing me to take all the time I needed to recharge. I was all fresh and ready to return yesterday, but got pink eye and ended up missing. I’ve got eye drops now and should not be contagious anymore.

Now, I’m back in action in many ways. I’m on a new diet and fitness program (that came to me last week - I had a lot of time to think). I’m back in the gym working out and cutting back what I eat. I’m more active and eating less crap - which should make for a good/healthy combo.

I’m also back writing and prepping for some upcoming conferences. One magazine that I’ve never really mentioned, but I write regularly for is LifeWay’s “Let’s Worship” magazine. I encourage you to check it out HERE. Besides writing articles and working on my book, I’m doing some audio projects, too.

This week I’ll be making 3 recordings.

1. Tonight, I’m recording an audio class entitled “Communicating to Those That Listen with Their Eyes” for WorshipMinistryU, which is a great new online seminar tool for those in worship ministry. I’m honored to be among their terrific faculty. I’ll let you know when my class is ready and available.
2. Later this week I will record an interview for the Church Media Podcast. One of the things we’ll discuss is a Media/Tech meet up at NAB on the night of the 15th. They’ll be a group of tech directors, media producers and software company reps that will all gather to hang out and eat. If you’re going to be there, you don’t want to miss this.
3. Also, later this week, we’ll be back in the studio to revive the Creative Synergy Podcast. I know it’s been forever - but we’ll be back in action soon.

EXTRA:
If you haven’t voted for the worship presentation software that your church uses, go HERE. I’d like to get a recent poll before my “Worship Presentation Software” class in April at NAB.

BONUS:
Birthdays - Yesterday, my youngest turned 4. Today is my brother’s birthday.

Lately, I’ve been considering getting Apple TV for our church. I have several ideas of how to use it and am sure there are others that I haven’t even thought about. If you’re interested or curious in how Apple TV can be used in a ministry setting, you can read more about it HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Are you using Apple TV? If so, please comment and tell us how you’re using it.

EXTRA:
Today begins “Tech Week” at Bent Tree. We have rehearsal every night this week, 2 Good Friday services, dress rehearsal on Saturday and 3 Easter services.

If all goes well, I should be on my way to Nashville for NRB today. I was planning on having lunch in Nashville, but as I type this (Thursday night) there are hundreds of flights delayed out of DFW. I’m just hoping I make it in time for my class on Saturday! Pray for me. If you’re there - holla!

EXTRA:
I really Easter v.2 from Igniter Media Group. Not only are the stills and loops very usable, but they’re creative, edgy, artsy, and just plain cool. The video “Because He Lives” is a home-run. And to top it all off - they have an HD version of everything, which is crucial for my church now. Well done, Igniter!

UPDATE:
The snow canceled my flight this morning. They originally re-booked my flight for tomorrow night, meaning I would miss my class tomorrow afternoon. I called and got on a flight that leaves tonight. I’m going to go ahead over to the airport and see if I can catch an earlier flight. I’m still coming Nashville!

I must say I enjoyed my first visit to the city of Tulsa, OK, though I didn’t get to see much of the city. I went from the airport to the EasyWorship offices, was in a meeting all day - left there and had a great dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Jeff Taylor (owner and creator of EasyWorship), then headed back to the airport and flew home.

What’s the word? The word (unofficially - this is just Greg talking) is that EasyWorship is working on a new and improved cross-platform software. That’s right - can you say “EasyWorship for Mac”? Jeff has assembled a very gifted and talented team and they have been hard at work on a forthcoming version of EW that incorporates many new features based on comments and suggestions from their customers. The design is sharp and intuitive, the features are exciting and will better equip your church.

I’m especially excited about one feature, but am not at liberty to talk about it. I was blindfolded when I was led into their office and kept in a dark room all day. My cell phone (which has a camera) was taken from me and I was sworn to secrecy. Okay - I exaggerate, but I really can’t talk about what I saw.

I’m back to work at the church today, have a few meetings and our weekly rehearsal tonight. More later.

PERSONAL:
Just to update you all: I’m still extremely sore from riding that horse the other day. I used muscles that haven’t been used in years. It hurts to move!

Many have asked what we’re doing as far as media in our new worship center. As I mentioned before, we are using EasyWorship as our presentation software. We are also slowly changing over our entire campus (all venues) to EasyWorship, which has a universal site license (other products such as MediaShout and ProPresenter charge extra to use their software on multiple computers). We have 7 venues that will be using EasyWorship, so the universal site license was a win for us.

My friends at EasyWorship were great during the crazy weeks and days leading up to our first worship service. Either we (Bent Tree) are the first church to use EasyWorship in an HD setting or we are one of the first - either way: we won’t be the last. I’ve heard rumors of confusion about whether or not EasyWorship can do HD. Let me set the record straight: it does and we’re doing it.

The trouble that we were having leading up to the first service was due to having the wrong video card. I went locally and purchased a new video card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS) and we were up and running in a matter of minutes. If you have any other questions about the initial setup of EasyWorship and the codecs I purchased/downloaded, just email me.

Here’s what’s up as far as the HD backgrounds we used. We’ve had 3 Sundays in our new worship center. The first Sunday we used all Igniter Backs Vol. 3 backgrounds (loops and stills). The next week we used more Igniter Backs and some brand new backgrounds from FortyOneTwenty. This past Sunday we used new HD backgrounds from SermonVideos.com.

I’d like to point out that I still encourage our volunteers that pick the backgrounds each week to use at least one still background for a song. As I’ve said before, motion backgrounds are most powerful in contrast to still backgrounds. You can read more on my philosophy of this in my “Less Is More” article.

EXTRA:
Still looking for FREE worship backgrounds? Check out HERE.

BONUS:
Yesterday we found our opening video to kick off our Easter service. It’s available at BlueFish.tv, it’s pretty sweet and it’s $1.99! Check it out HERE.

I don’t know what it’s like at your church, but at mine, we (my Audio Coordinator and myself) are constantly having to battle with frequency coordination throughout our campus. I’ve said from day one - I’ve never seen a church with so many wireless mics. Every classroom, every venue, you name it - it’s got wireless mics. This isn’t by choice - I inherited this.

Since our campus is under reconstruction, we had to move the children’s ministry from the Children’s Building over to the Education Building. When we did that, the kids’ ministry brought over their mics from their building, but they clashed with the existing mics in the E-building and canceled each other out. It has become a huge project to coordinate our campus (this involves my team, several different types of software, a scanner we just purchased, Clark ProMedia and a professional frequency coordinator from Florida who scanned our entire campus for all RF activity).

Across the street from us is a small church called Prestonwood (a church of over 20,000). People come to visit Bent Tree and everyone says, “Wow - Prestonwood is literally across the street.” Each time I say, “Yep, there it is.” We had to talk with their engineering team (yes, they have an Engineering Department) and coordinate our frequencies with each other. They had 3 professional RF guys on site when I called and were working on the same thing.
Yesterday, we learned that the 10 wireless mics we had set aside for our new kids’ theater won’t work after January ‘09, due to the ongoing bidding of wireless bands. Are you guys keeping up with all this? It’s huge and the Church doesn’t even have a voice in the decision - it’s all about money and churches can’t compete with what these companies are bidding. My Audio Coordinator talked with Shure yesterday and their guy told him to not even bother with writing letters - money talks, plain and simple.

Take a look HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE for more info if this is news to you. If you are keeping up with this, I’d love to hear your thoughts, observations, plans, ideas, etc. When we ordered our new microphone package for our new worship center, I ordered a wired mic for every wireless mic. I wanted to make sure we could do everything we do - just in case. FYI - All of our new wireless mics in our new worship center are Shure UHF-Rs. How are you future-proofing your church?

Great comments, emails and feedback on yesterday’s blog post. Unless someone contacts me that hasn’t so far, I think we’re the first church to use EasyWorship with a full HD system. One common theme I noticed from your comments is that many of you are searching for HD resources. I’ve been putting together a collection over the past year. Here’s where you can find HD media resources:

• BlueFish.tv - Essentials Vol. 1-3 has HD stills, countdowns and loops
• BluePonyDigital - This mainstream company has a worship line of HD products
• Digital Juice - We use their HD backgrounds, as well as use their products to create custom lower third titles for our staff
• Igniter Backs - Check Igniter Backs Vol. 3 for HD stills, countdowns and loops
• SermonVideos.com - SV offers HD motion backgrounds
• WorshipFilms - Most WorshipFilm’s products are available in HD and SD

I’m sure many of you have done this and many of you will do this in the future - that’s making the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 (widescreen). Once I’ve been through the entire switch, I’d be happy to share any thoughts, lessons learned, feedback, etc. with those that are switching in the future.

For now, I’d love to here from any of you that have already made the switch. We’re in the process of uploading all new backgrounds, lower-thirds and creating the lower-third titles that we do for staff members (Pete Briscoe - Senior Pastor, etc.). If you have any words of wisdom, please email me at: greg@churchvideoideas.com.

Obviously, widescreen or 16:9 is not necessarily HD, but HD is 16:9. We are starting out with a total HD system, so if your church is full HD, I’d really like to hear from you. I’ve got lots of questions. *** Especially if you are using HD backgrounds in EasyWorship - HOLLA AT ME! I came home yesterday so frustrated and drained that I just stared at a piece of paper for about an hour and a half. I think I’m losing it!

We’re switching from another presentation software to EasyWorship campus-wide and I’m in the process (which I’ve done before and helped other churches with) of setting up EasyWorship for the first time and downloading all the codecs, etc. I’m sure it will eventually work, but we were having issues as of yesterday.

With the video card that came with the computer and the special (Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme) video card that we had to get to stay HD, we have 3 video outs. The guys from Clark ProMedia did the initial/hardware setup and I’m trying to setup EasyWorship itself. Again, if you are HD and using EasyWorship, PLEASE give me a shout.

* My friend, Dave Clark, of National Community Church, just wrote an article entitled “Church Media: A 2008 Forecast“. I think it’s worth checking out. As he said, “High-definition video also will appear on the screens of many more churches this year. The prices of high-definition cameras and equipment have become affordable, even for average-sized churches.”

BONUS:

This just in from blog sponsor Worship Leader Magazine: The Upgrade Your Stage state-of-the-art giveaway is your chance to win an assortment of resources with a retail value of over $15,000 (for the grand prize) for your service of worship. We want to equip one church, so they can use their financial resources in other ways. There are also 1st and 2nd place winners who will also receive significant prizes.

Anyone can enter, as long as your church fits the guidelines, but the church chosen will most likely have the most need along with the best story. Though there is no set cap of church size, the finalists will likely be churches of 500 or less.

EXTRA:

I started a Shelfari group for Church 2.0 leaders - this is where you can list your favorite books that you recommend other Church leaders read. Check it out HERE.

EXTRA, EXTRA:

Anyone getting a MacBook Air?

Supposedly, we have 2 Sundays left in our current worship center and will have our first service in our new worship center on Sunday, Feb. 3rd - that’s the plan. It could be the 10th, but we’re going full-steam ahead towards the 3rd. It’s getting pretty exciting walking through there these days. The video portion is pretty-much done. They began working on lighting today. Next week (for one entire week) they will tune the room. It’s madness and fun all at the same time. Your prayers would be appreciated.

FOLLOW UP:

I got some good emails and feedback on yesterday’s blog post. Apparently, I have some people that work for Microsoft and Apple that read my blog. The wars may not be over. Phil Cooke made a compelling argument for the wars ending, but the word on the street is that Microsoft and the porn industry might be going with HD DVD. Unfortunately, the porn industry pretty-much runs and determines the future of video - believe it or not. Regardless, I think we’ll be getting a Blu-Ray disc player.

CONTINUING ED:

Yesterday, I mentioned that Phil and I will be speaking at NRB and NAB. I forgot to mention that SermonSpice is sponsoring my classes at NRB and eleven72 and ProPresenter are sponsoring my classes at NAB.

Here’s my 2 cents: if you are in driving distance of Nashville, join me at NRB - they really are trying to make it more relevant for churches (that’s the reason I’m going to be there). If you can only choose one tech conference this year, try to shoot for NAB in Vegas. I’ve already heard of several friends going and am looking forward to hanging out with them there. I try to hang out in groups of people when I’m in Vegas.

EXTRA:

If you are local to Dallas and can’t make it to NAB, I’ll be teaching the same 2 classes at the ECHO Conference in Dallas this summer.

Thanks to my friend, Phil Cooke, for posting this blog on the Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD war. Apparently, Blu-Ray is the future. We had recently been discussing this at my church - wondering what we should put in our video control room. Guess we’re going Blu-Ray shopping.

FYI - Both Phil and I will be speaking at NRB and NAB. If you’re there and have never been to one of his classes, I encourage you to check him out - you won’t be disappointed. In February, I’ll be reviewing Phil’s new book on this blog.

PERSONAL:

I’m extremely disappointed with the Cowboys.